First Impressions / RIDEBACK

OP Sequence

OP: 「RIDEBACK」 by MELL
Watch the OP! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼

Summary:

In a tumultuous time in which a group called the GGP has taken over governing the world, a ballet dancer named Ogata Rin is in the middle of a big performance when she suddenly hurts herself. Sometime later, Rin and her friend Shouko enter college. Rin has given up on ballet and claims not to regret it, but she’s still not entirely comfortable with the subject, especially when the topic of her mother comes up. Her mother was also a great dancer, but she had died in an earthquake six years ago. Rin had wanted to be like her mother, but she was unsatisfied with her own ballet and quit after the injury.

On one rainy day, Rin stumbles upon the Rideback club and is mistaken by one of its members – a guy named Hishida Haruki – as a prospective member. He offers to let her ride a red one called the Type L Fuego and is impressed by how nimbly she mounts it. With some instruction and help from Haruki, Rin is able to start up the vehicle and move it, and it responds to voice commands. Unfortunately, some of the controls aren’t working properly, and the Fuego takes Rin away from the clubhouse. Although initially startled, Rin soon gets the hang of riding a Rideback and starts really enjoying it, even performing some ballet moves with it. When the Fuego goes into Spread Legs Form however, Rin loses control, and one of the other Rideback club members Okakura Tenshirou tries to help her from atop his own Rideback. He helps her regain control, but it’s too late to stop her from sailing off the edge of an unfinished road, and for a moment, Rin is soaring above everything on top of the Rideback.

ED Sequence

ED: 「記憶」 (Kioku) by ユンナ feat GOKU (Younha feat GOKU)
Watch the ED!: Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼

Well, the OP isn’t quite as good as I had hoped from the commercials (I hate to say it, but I mainly like the sound of the Engrish chorus), and I ended up enjoying the ED + the images/animation as a set a lot more. There are some interesting notes on the ED too. It’s by Younha who some of you may remember did Bleach’s 3rd ED and a few other anime songs. Well, she’s released some music in South Korea since then, and this song (in Korean) was one of those. She’s recently put her sights back on Japan, signing with Geneon Entertainment, and that’s how RIDEBACK came to have this song as its ED.
 

Wow, it’s rare that I get hyped about a series from its promotional material and/or manga, and then the series actually delivers beyond what I expected. For starters, the production quality is amazing. The ballet scene to start the episode was beautiful (the immediate contrast to war made it all that much better), and the certain parts of the sakura petals scene even reminded me of 5 Centimeters Per Second. Okay, not quite that good, but you get my point – RIDEBACK is really pretty. Here’s to hoping Madhouse can keep up the level of quality.

The story is nothing to sneeze at either. A lot of this first episode was introducing everything and showing off the Fuego Rideback in action, but they put in a good amount of character development into Rin (particularly in relation to her mother) and hint at the tumultuous state the world is in. They even showed the Ridebacks in combat which I wasn’t expecting till a bit later. It appears that this series is taking the basic elements and characters of the manga and presenting it in a relatively new way. So far so good.

Now normally I’d be keen on blogging a show with a first episode as impressive as this one, but my schedule’s already too crowded, so Trillian will probably blog this in the future (pending Trillian’s own interest in the show of course).

54 Comments

  9. Wow, the animation looks really good. They blended the CGI really well so it’s not hideous like most CGI-mixed animes. At first I thought the plot is going to be shallow due to my impression that it’s going to be a sports anime of some sort, but the plot may actually be interesting.

    I hope you will keep blogging this Omni :).

    jahaa
    Reply

  13. “RIDEBACK is really pretty. Here’s to hoping Madhouse can keep up the level of quality.”
    Agreed, really good animation quality, the best I have seen since a while in a series. Looking forward to this show, all last Madhouse anime were good to me, so I hope this one won’t be an exception.

    mutio
    Reply

  19. i personally like the ending song with the japanese version. the korean version didn’t cut it for me even though the japanese version didn’t came out yet or i don’t think it did.

    aki-san
    Reply

  23. Thanks for the recap! I’ll definitely try to check this out 🙂 The screenshots are absolutely beautiful!

    About the ED: Wow, it’s the Japanese version of “Memory”! =D I prefer the original with Tablo, but the Japanese one is different (and still good).

    xmerokox
    Reply

  24. This looks pretty good. The production quality is also great. Now compare this to the QUALITY of madhouse’s last creation and you can see how much effort they put into that work compared to this one -_-

    FlameStrike
    Reply

  26. Bike animes were quite popular in the 80’s． Akira. Megazone 23. Mospeada． You name it. I’m glad to see Rideback as a new and exciting addition to the genre. This bike is ridden on the back. It not only adds a new twist to the visual effect, but also literally opens up a dimension of possibilities for fight sequences– or ballet! Character design is quite pleasing. The plot of the first episode even shows some potential for inner character development. I have a strong feeling that this anime will be the shinning star of the season.

    Matroid
    Reply

  31. A pretty good episode, and the animation is top quality, there’s no question. I was a little iffy how a ballet dancer could suddenly pick up motorcycle riding so quickly, but they made the transition fairly well. I am interested in the war aspect of the story and how mecha-bike riding fits into it all (even if bike-mecha seem a little impractical for fighting modern wars, at least to me).

    That aside, the character faces bother me more than a little with a case of “horse-face,” that is, the characters’ faces tend to be kinda long, in my view, especially the main heroine’s. Horse-face on a dancer’s body = strange. And the other bike-riding dude’s white-less eyes creep me out, haha (he’s like a reverse Batou from GitS). I guess it’s just the style but it’ll take some getting used to.

    Still, an enjoyable first ep. Hope the animation quality holds up and the story unfolds.

    Reiter
    Reply

  33. Im not sold on this series yet. Its beautiful but nothing really got me interested in it so far. Hopefully that changes a few episodese in since this anime looks great visually.

    Also I totally agree that this ED was pretty good, I <3 Younha’s music

    jin
    Reply

  36. Great anime, left a very good impression for a 1st episode but wtf is going on with the OP. I’m completely no good when it comes to engrish. I think I’ve been in the states too long cause my Eng & Jap voices are totally different. I could understand a few words but that was it. Even the ED gave me a hard time, it sounded like she was singing in slow motion or something.

    Oh well, if that’s the only problem I’m going to have with this anime then I’ll take that any day over the hellspawn that is the content of some of the present shows that are out there.

    Megas
    Reply

  46. I enjoyed the OP and ED, kudos to both artist.
    I particularly like the way this story brings a dancer on an egile machine,
    I’ll be looking forward to the way they coordinate the moves between her and the machine’s opperation. I will be expecting alot from the story too.

    Rin was beautiful at the point where she mentioned the dance stage being her world.

    RosaGarthern
    Reply

  48. I’d classify this a really slow start. I see nothing revolutionary in this episode or anything that really grabbed me and made me want to gush about it, but it’s not without potential either. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get spoiled in the usual manner.

    Kaioshin Sama
    Reply

  50. I really like the rideback design. I was wondering when a motorcycle-type themed anime would come out.

    Did anyone else notice the engine cut off switch was on when she started the engine?

    sgtbanana
    Reply

  51. Kaioshin Sama, how is this a really slow start, a really slow start would have been to concentrate the whole episode on her ballet, show how she quit, her comparisons to her mother, a couple of flashbacks and ending with her starting school, followed by an episode of her getting asked a bunch of questions about why she quit ballet, followed by her glaring at the bike thingy from afar, followed by the next episode where she find the bike thingy and take it for a ride or something. to have an episode give us all that and a little more including background on the global state of things doesnt really count as a slow start at all imo. hell, we already know she looks to be a natural at it, given her background, that these bikes are scaled back models of military hardware, how her mother died, and that it seems like she is about to join this rideback club. i mean, the only thing we dont know is where this is all going and if you want even that after just one episode, then i would say that that is asking too much.

    GGear0323
    Reply

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